Field
The disclosure generally relates to classification of packets transmitted in a network, particularly to the determination of content to be stored in storage located along the network based on the type of data transferred in the packet, and more particularly to performing said determination and classification using a plurality of content storing servers.
Description of the Related Art
Service providers worldwide are facing a mounting problem of flattening revenues coupled with increasing costs brought forth by increasing usage of bandwidth, growing switching clients, subscriber saturation and price competition. These mobile and broadband providers are facing challenges in delivering new revenue generating services while seeing their over the top (OTT) counterparts reaping rewards from content delivered over the networks they built and maintained over years.
The vast majority of these OTT services are delivered over hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), the de-facto protocol for application development and delivery. Whether it is video, social networking, search, or advertising, or whether it is over fixed line or mobile applications, it is most likely running over HTTP. However, this protocol is also the most process intensive protocol for network devices. Hence practically any increase in usage results in increase the traffic on the service providers.
Certainly controlling traffic on the Internet requires various levels of understanding of the traffic that flows through the network which also increases in its level of sophistication. Various systems and solutions have been offered to enable deep-packet-inspection (DPI) to enable an ever sophisticated ability to shape the traffic on the network. This system allows the service providers to better manage the network and its related resources and provide a higher level of quality of service (QoS) to increase revenues and profits. However, the rapid increase in the delivery of heavy bandwidth consuming data, such as video, requires a new level of handling system that is not available today in related art solutions. A known problem is that an access of a user node to a content source and a subsequent access by another user node to the same content result in additional traffic load on the content provider and on the entire network. When, for example, a popular video clip is accessed by multiple user nodes, there is a significant and noticeable degradation of the network performance that may even lead to network failure. Some related art solutions attempt to store all the data in caches. However, the huge amounts of data where each and every packet is needed to be inspected, regardless of its source, makes this a daunting and impractical task.
It would be advantageous to provide service providers a solution that will enable them to effectively manage and control the delivery of heavy bandwidth consuming data such that the overall bandwidth requirements are loaded and shared across the network in general, particularly within the network of a specific service provider. It would be further advantageous to provide a system and method to overcome asymmetrical aspects of routing topologies.